State Personnel - Collective Bargaining - Faculty
HB661 expands collective bargaining rights for faculty at certain Maryland public institutions of higher education. The bill defines “faculty” broadly to include full-time, part-time, and adjunct employees at University System of Maryland institutions, Morgan State University, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland whose duties involve academic responsibilities, including teachers, researchers, and department heads, as well as tenure-track, tenured, and nontenure-track employees. It excludes officers, supervisory employees, confidential employees, and student employees.
The bill amends Maryland’s State Government and State Personnel and Pensions laws to make faculty an expressly recognized employee category for labor organization purposes and to create separate bargaining units for faculty and for contingent, contractual, or temporary faculty. Those two faculty bargaining units may choose to combine into a single unit. It also revises exclusions from collective bargaining coverage so that certain contingent or temporary employees are excluded generally, but not when they are faculty, and it clarifies the bargaining-unit structure for higher education employees at the affected institutions. The bill takes effect July 1, 2025.
If enacted, HB661 would change Maryland’s public-sector labor law by extending collective bargaining eligibility to a new class of higher education employees and by restructuring bargaining units at system institutions, Morgan State University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and Baltimore City Community College. It would require those institutions to recognize separate faculty bargaining units, with an option for contingent, contractual, or temporary faculty to merge with the main faculty unit, thereby affecting labor relations, representation elections, and negotiations over wages, hours, and working conditions for covered faculty.
The available bill record shows no committee transcripts and no recorded votes, so there is no direct evidence of debate or opposition in the provided materials. Based on the bill’s sponsorship and subject matter, the measure appears to be a pro-labor, pro-faculty expansion of bargaining rights, likely supported by advocates for higher education employees and collective bargaining. The absence of recorded voting history in the provided context means overall sentiment cannot be measured from committee or floor action here.
The main policy issue is the scope of who should be included as “faculty” and how bargaining units should be organized. Potential points of contention include whether contingent, contractual, and temporary faculty should be treated separately or combined with other faculty, and whether extending bargaining rights to adjunct and part-time academic staff could affect institutional management flexibility. Another likely area of dispute is the exclusion of supervisory, managerial, confidential, and student employees, which may require careful line-drawing at the affected institutions.